Sic et Non admits "There is no God"?

[_Gadianton]

In a thread appearing on the Sic et Non blog and discussion board called Science has taken on the role of mankinds deliverer the apologists appear to admit that science is, in fact, delivering mankind instead of God. The apologists are open to the prospect of science as deliverer as they face a new foe: Covid-19 deniers. There are six or seven of these folks now, good Latter-Day Saints I believe, participating on the blog and delivering up-votes and down-votes. And what's more, division is surfacing among the mid-tier apologists. Consider Ike, a stubborn supporter of DCP when it comes to critics, has now admitted on this thread that there is some merit to the coronavirus conspiracies. And worse, with Bednar and the Church flailing, there is little revelation to enforce the caution recommended by the blog proprietor and Sam Lafevere.

When confronted by one of these new participants who claimed many blue states locked down while there were no appreciable infections, Kiwi57 responds:

I work in the IT industry. In the late 1990's, there was a lot of talk about something called "the Y2K bug." We knew it as the 6-digit date problem. In many systems, dates were stored as strings of digits, with 2 digits each for year, month and day. The problem had the potential of throwing all sorts of date-related calculations, including business and financial systems, into chaos, simply because every date starting with 00 was less than every date starting with 99.

In the event, hardly anything happened, and many people who knew nothing at all about the IT industry assumed that it was all a bunch of nonsense.

The real reason why nothing much happened was because tens of thousands of IT professionals put in literally millions of man-hours fixing the problem.

No-one would have been willing to spend money on the problem if it hadn't been serious. But because it was fixed, with hindsight, the uninformed assumed that it had never been serious.

They were wrong.

And so are you.

Dumbfounding! In a blog post titled "Science has taken on the role of mankind's deliverer" Kiwi57 provides a stunning example of science delivering mankind! Further, the apologists argue that it will be science that likewise saves us from Covid-19, providing yet a second example of how science is now our savior.

In my experience, there are two groups of people commenting on Covid-19: (1) those who understand the science, and (2) those who think it's some kind of "deep state" conspiracy.

Indeed, "those who understand the science". The science that will, as the blog post says, deliver mankind.

One could say the same thing about Book of Mormon geography. There are those who understand the science, and those who think contemporary archaeology is a conspiracy, where politics define the terms of science, which either rejects or turns a deaf ear to the Limited Geography theory and the work of Brian Stubbs.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Russell McGregor, known as that awful poster who goes by the cowardly pseudonymous moniker "Kiwi57", and who lives in that out-of-the-way country called New Zealand a.k.a., 'Nieuw Zeeland', the name first given to the island by a Dutch mapmaker, would more than likely insist, erroneously by the way, that it's technology and not science, thus preserving his argument. Hopefully by typing out his name I won't summon Russell MockGregor to our board. Lord knows that'd be a small miracle.

- Doc

[_Dr LOD]

Russell McGregor, known as that awful poster who goes by the cowardly pseudonymous moniker "Kiwi57", and who lives in that out-of-the-way country called New Zealand a.k.a., 'Nieuw Zeeland', the name first given to the island by a Dutch mapmaker, would more than likely insist, erroneously by the way, that it's technology and not science, thus preserving his argument. Hopefully by typing out his name I won't summon Russell MockGregor to our board. Lord knows that'd be a small miracle.

- Doc

Ha I almost thought someone was quoting the "esteemed emeritus professor" Midglely trying to summon the Vegan Burrito, from wherever he thinks burritos originate from.

[_moksha]

That summoning works for Shades over at the SeN.

[_Physics Guy]

Science may be doing better than alternatives at solving medical problems—I hope it is—but I'm uneasy about any tendency to push science onto the empty pedestal of an earthly savior. There is no guarantee that medical science will always find cures and vaccines, or that physics and chemistry will discover ways for us to have a clean energy cake and eat it, too. To say that science will really do what gods only ever promised to do is a promise that science can never fulfill.

[_Stem]

Lol kiwi57, stuffing his foot in his mouth since 1957 ( assuming that's his birth year).

Still feeling happy I haven't headed back to sic et non for a while, but I admit I enjoy seeing these little updates.

[_Dr Exiled]

Science may be doing better than alternatives at solving medical problems—I hope it is—but I'm uneasy about any tendency to push science onto the empty pedestal of an earthly savior. There is no guarantee that medical science will always find cures and vaccines, or that physics and chemistry will discover ways for us to have a clean energy cake and eat it, too. To say that science will really do what gods only ever promised to do is a promise that science can never fulfill.

I think that is DCP doing his strawman thing.